


Pants on Fire

by Squirrel_Stone



Series: Infinite (Original Version) [16]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Incredible Hulk (2008), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, BAMF ladies, Darcy is Sigyn, Gen, Reincarnation, Yggdrasil - Freeform, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-16
Updated: 2015-03-27
Packaged: 2018-03-18 05:50:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3558476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Squirrel_Stone/pseuds/Squirrel_Stone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy knew her lies had to fall apart eventually, and one by one, the boys of the Tower learned of her secret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bruce

Bruce was the first, approaching Darcy after an accidental Hulk-out that destroyed half the lab with Darcy, Jane, Tony, and Betty in it. Tony claimed that his and Darcy’s saving grace was that they had been chosen by the Infinity Stones to be protected (by Pepper and Jane respectively). Bruce thought differently.

“We need to talk,” Bruce whispered, jerking his head back towards the lab.

Darcy glanced back down the hall before nodding and following the scientist. Once they were in the lab with the soundproof doors locked, she asked, “What’s going on? Is this about the Other Guy?”

Bruce hesitated. “Yes and no,” he replied. “It’s a little bit about the Other Guy, but it’s mostly about you. You see, the Hulk can sense things I can’t, and sometimes he’ll tell me what he knows if it scares him.”

“What does that have to do with me?” Darcy asked, her fake smile faltering. There was no way the Hulk could tell what she was.

The man only raised an eyebrow at her. “Darcy, it takes a lot to scare the Hulk,” he told her. “The Hulk turns my fear into anger a lot, but he doesn’t really get scared. Now do you want to explain why he called you the connection?”

Darcy’s jaw flat out dropped. “He could tell…” Her words got caught in her throat. “He could tell that I was… even after just a few minutes?”

“He just kept saying ‘connection girl not safe, connection girl lying,’” Bruce explained. “Does he mean you’re in danger or that you’re not safe to be around?”

A heavy sigh escaped the brunette. “I am Yggdrasil,” Darcy declared. “The tree Thor talks about? It’s me; I’m human. I’m a connection between the realms, between life and death… it’s who I am. But I promise, I’m not going to hurt anyone. Especially not with my girls trying to have normal lives. And… I want a normal life. That’s why I didn’t tell you or the other guys.”

“I understand,” Bruce said after a moment. “So you’re safe?”

Darcy nodded, but her eyes were filled with hidden fear. “Absolutely.”


	2. Thor

Thor was the second to figure out that Darcy wasn’t what she seemed. He’d known the woman for years without holding any suspicion, but one phrase caught his attention. Darcy was telling one of her crazy college stories (she had too many to count), and there was laughter as the brunette recounted the tale of setting a statue on fire.

“We really didn’t mean to do it,” Darcy insisted. “But one second, the university president was fine, the next he was on fire! To this day, none of us know exactly how it happened, but my money is on the exploding balloons. We were never even caught. We all just ran back to the dorms and pretended nothing happened. The next day, it was all over the news.”

Jane cracked a little smile. “That was you?” she asked. “You do know President Matthews cut the basketball team’s funding because he thought they did it, right?”

A flush appeared over Darcy’s face, and she took a sip of her beer before continuing. “Well, the week after that was spring break, so there wasn’t time for a true investigation or trial even if he did catch us.”

Thor’s face fell. _Investigation or trial._ No, Thor knew he heard different words coming from her mouth, translated into English for everyone there.

“I’m gonna go get some more beer,” Darcy declared, getting to her feet.

Thor followed her actions. “I’ll help,” he stated. “It seems that you are not the only one with an empty glass.” The two went to the kitchen, and Thor checked over his shoulder to make sure no one else followed.

Darcy was fishing a few beers out of the fridge and had just placed them on the counter when Thor spoke.

“How were you using Allspeak?” he asked, his voice dark and cold, his eyes steely. There had been a time when he found amusement in tricks and games, but after Loki’s fall from grace, he was far less inclined to tolerate lies.

The bottle in Darcy’s left hand shattered in her grip. The brunette slowly moved her gaze from Thor to her bloody hand, and she carefully shook the appendage to get rid of the single glass shard that wound up embedded in it. Thor watched as the wound healed almost instantly.

Darcy pursed her lips and waved a hand over the shattered remains of the bottle, and the mess vanished. “Please don’t tell the guys,” she begged. “The girls and Bruce all know, but all I want is for my life to be normal. Please, understand that.”

The ferocious look on Thor’s face faded, and he pulled away a little. His mind flashed back to when he was only a child and he had just made friends with a noble girl who had moved from one of the provinces to the capital. She’d sulked around the palace for nearly a year before they were properly introduced, and even then she was skittish. After talking for a while, the girl (ten at the time) had collapsed, sobbing.

Thor hadn’t really known what to do other than sit down on the floor next to her and place a gentle hand on her head.

“All I want is for my life to be normal,” she had cried. “Please, make him understand that.”

His father had wandered into the room as she said those words, and he quickly ushered the two children away from each other. Thor didn’t see the girl for another year after that.

“Sigyn?” Thor asked, looking Darcy over warily. The woman nodded, and Thor walked around the island to hug her. The hug was brief, and when Thor pulled away, he started vocalizing his thought process. “You’re… how…” It hit him. “You can only die by your own hand.” Jane’s explanation came back to him. “I still don’t understand; all six Infinity Stones are already present.”

Darcy gave him a faint smile. “I am Yggdrasil, Thor,” she explained. “And you and I will have much to talk about after the party. However right now, I believe we promised our friends some drinks.”


	3. Bucky

Bucky found out about Darcy on a bad day. He was still recovering from the after effects of being the Winter Soldier and quite possibly always would be, but the day he found out about Darcy was particularly bad. He’d locked himself in the bathroom and wouldn’t even let Natasha, Steve, or Rebecca in, and he’d been silent when Betty offered to use her powers to calm his mind. It was all terrifying.

The man was sitting curled up on the floor, banging his head back into the cabinets when the door unlocked. “Go. Away,” he gritted out, but the door opened anyway. It went against years of training and learned behavior not to jump up and strangle the intruder.

Worst of all, it was Darcy Lewis. The only one of them without any powers, any tricks, any magical protection. The others would recover even if he choked them to death. Darcy? Not so much.

“Does Jane know you’re here?” he asked, his voice hoarse from yelling at himself.

Darcy shook her head as she closed the door, locking it behind her. “I made everyone else go get lunch so we could talk.” She paused. “Not that they knew I would come in here, of course, but…”

The woman stopped talking and sighed, taking a couple of steps until she was right next to Bucky. She sunk down until she was sitting on the floor with him. “C’mere,” she ordered, holding out her arms. Her hands were on either side of his body, one hand over his arms and the other near the back of his head, but she didn’t touch him.

Bucky glared at Darcy out of the corner of his eye. “I could kill you,” he declared gruffly.

“I know,” she replied. “I’m gonna touch you, okay?” She moved slowly, as to not startle to veteran, and the hand hovering over his arms landed, the hand behind his head coming into contact with his hair. It was sticky and matted with blood from the number of times he’d slammed his head back. “I need you to take a deep breath.”

Bucky did as told, and he felt a warm, soothing sensation on the wound he’d given himself. His eyes fluttered closed before he went into panic mode. Was he back at HYDRA? Was he about to be wiped? Those were the questions that flew through his mind, and he lashed out, pushing Darcy away from him.

Darcy whimpered and sat up, causing Bucky to come back to reality. “Darcy?” he whispered. “I-I’m sorry, are you okay?”

The dark-haired woman nodded, and she moved closer to Bucky again, only for him to scoot back. His flesh hand went to the back of his head to feel the spot that had been soothed by Darcy, and when he pulled his hand away to look at his fingers, he saw no blood. He looked from his hand to Darcy. “How did you do that?” he asked.

Slowly, Darcy reached out, taking his metal hand in hers without fear. “Bucky, I know what it’s like,” she told him. “To not be in control, to have someone dictating every second of your life. It’s terrifying, and it leaves scars.”

Bucky scoffed. “What would you know about not being in control?” he snapped. “You just have your normal little life. You can leave at any time. If I tried to leave, I’d probably lose control and kill someone.”

Darcy sighed, giving his metal hand a little squeeze. Neural receptors in the mechanics allowed him to feel her touch. “I’m going to tell you a story, Bucky,” she declared, “about a little girl who became a princess without wanting to be.”

The Winter Soldier frowned, his nose scrunching up a little bit. “Don’t tell me this is gonna start with—”

“ _Once upon a time_ ,” Darcy began, “there was a young peasant girl who lived on a farm with her parents and siblings. She was only a child, but she helped out in every way she could. The king of the land had long been looking for someone with extraordinary magic—the kind of magic that would make him the most powerful man alive and cause his enemies to tremble before him. The peasant girl had that power, and the king found out.”

Bucky sighed and gave Darcy a bored look, his mouth set in a thin line, but the storyteller continued regardless.

“The peasant girl was taken to the palace and given every possible amenity you could imagine. She wore the finest gowns and danced at all the balls and had the best food she could eat. But this only lasted for a week before the king grew impatient. The king ordered the peasant girl to do as he said, but she didn’t know she had her powers yet. So the king hurt the girl, putting her through trial after trial until her magic surfaced to protect her. That’s when the girl realized what danger she was in. She had lived many lives before, and many times people sought to take advantage of her gifts for personal gain. The girl tried to fight back, but I was still a child and vulnerable, her powers weak. He made her do as he wanted and even found a way to restrict her powers so she could not travel outside the kingdom.

“As I grew to be a woman, the girl learned to better control her powers and tried to fight back against the king, but he would only sentence her to time in the dungeons when she did. Despite all the horrors the king put her through, the woman fell in love with one of the king’s sons. The two got married and planned to run away, but the king caught them. While their marriage was binding, the king was still able to catch them both and use their emotions to manipulate them.

“The king was so focused on gaining power in the kingdoms that he failed to notice a threat coming to them all. Fortunately, the woman and her husband discovered this plot. The two devised a plan to stop the threat, but it meant the woman would have to die so she could be reincarnated in another kingdom and risk the plan falling apart and potentially have her husband die. Despite the risk, I killed myself anyway and was reborn here on Earth. The woman and her husband were reunited when I got my powers back, and the two prevented major damage to the planet, even though their plan involved the woman’s husband acting as a villain. Know that though they are both free now, they live in fear.”

Bucky’s face had hardened, and he swallowed back the tears in his eyes. “Do you know how many times you slipped up?” he asked, turning his head to look at the woman. “Five times. Five times you said ‘I’ or ‘me’ or ‘my…’”

Darcy winced and scooted closer to the soldier. “Oh, Bucky, I am so sorry,” she apologized. “I never meant to… it was just supposed to be a story. I didn’t mean to say…”

Before either of them knew it, Bucky had his arms wrapped around Darcy in a hug, as if worrying about her took his mind off his own problems.

“You’re not alone, Bucky,” she whispered. “I suffered a thousand years and I made it out. You can, too.”


	4. Fury

Fury found out because of Coulson. After the revival of S.H.I.E.L.D., Coulson came up to Fury cool as a cucumber.

“I’ll do this on one condition,” he declared.

Fury sighed and shook his head. “If you want Lola fixed up—”

“That’s not what this is about,” Coulson interrupted, “though I wouldn’t object. This is about my niece Darcy.” He handed Fury a manila file folder—hey, it was a cliché for a reason. “In that file is all the actual information on her. It’s what I’ve been keeping from you since the day I joined. None of the information in that folder makes it into electronic files, and you need to keep an eye on her, keep her safe. There are some people in this world and off it who would cause a lot of problems if they knew who she really was.”

In a world of superheroes and crazy billionaires who made metal suits, Fury wasn’t that surprised that Coulson’s niece wasn’t quite human. “She a mutant?” he asked, opening the file a bit. The answer stared him right in the face, and he slapped the file shut.

Coulson gave the man a half-hearted smile. “You can see my concern.”

Fury smiled wryly his friend and former subordinate. “I can see that you’ve been protecting a cosmic entity,” Fury corrected. “How long until shit hits the fan?”

“Whenever Odin finds out about her,” Coulson explained. “She can handle almost anything—she planned the invasion to cause minimal damage and made a Titan think it was his plan—but she’ll panic if she sees Odin. Loki’s trying to make Odin see their side, but if he comes, start shooting.”

“Understood, _Director_ ,” Fury replied facetiously. “I’ll get some stronger guns.”


	5. Tony

Tony wasn’t exactly thrilled about how he found out. It was another one of those moments where he walked out into the common room to see something strange; this time, it was an argument between Thor and Darcy. Arguments amongst the team weren’t uncommon, though they were usually confined to trivial things (except for the whole disaster when they first met in 2012). This was something that made Tony’s stomach turn just looking at it.

Darcy gave Thor a good push to keep him away from her, and the god of thunder had his arms outstretched to make gestures in a way that made him look at least twice as menacing as he did in battle. Darcy’s face was red, and tears stained her cheeks, but she didn’t let up.

“I am never going back to Asgard!” Darcy spat in a tone that made Tony realize that this was not the first time she’d said it during the fight. “I never want to lay my eyes on Odin again!”

“He is the Allfather, and as Yggdrasil, you owe all realms and their rulers visitation!” Thor snapped back, shaking a finger at her once.

Tony’s mouth dropped. Little Darcy was an ancient mystical tree? It was official: nothing made sense anymore.

Darcy’s voice went up in volume and in tone. “I OWE HIM NOTHING!” she yelled back, her voice cracking. She sniffed and looked down, and when she looked up, tears filled her eyes.

The fight was immediately over.

“Darcy?” Thor asked in a whisper, his face softening. He slowly reached out, placing a hand on her shoulder. Darcy flinched back before letting Thor touch her, realizing he wouldn’t hurt her.

Tony didn’t know what to do. He was a hopeless bystander as he tried to gather information.

Thor took a slow step forward, and Darcy flinched a bit, only to step into his embrace after the initial instinct. The god wrapped his arms around his sister-in-law, petting her hair to comfort her. “Darcy, what happened?” he asked quietly. “I promise, you need not return to Asgard.”

Darcy sniffed and finally put her arms around Thor as well, sobbing into his chest. “I need to go,” she cried, voice muffled by his chest. “I need to go back to Asgard and help all the realms, but I can’t.”

Thor nodded in understanding, still petting Darcy’s hair. “You don’t have to,” he promised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For once Tony doesn't jump in and make a scene! Then again, a scene was kind of already being made...


	6. Clint

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's another chapter because there's a severe weather watch and it's my first one at college so I'm a little skittish and need a distraction.

Clint found out because of Loki. In the apartment he shared with Natasha and Bucky, he found a note with his name on it propped up next to a box. Clint picked up the note and unfolded it, reading the message inside.

_I’m sorry.  
_ _-L_

The archer’s eyes went wide, his mind instantly going back to 2012. The note was written in green ink and in perfect penmanship, leaving very little room for doubt in Clint’s mind. In fact, the only doubt came from Thor having spoken of Loki’s death. He looked to the box and hesitantly reached out, lifting the lid.

In the box were three arrows, each made of platinum or perhaps some similar alien metal. Clint set the lid down and picked up one of the arrows. It tingled in his hands, a warming sensation filling him. Slowly, Clint put the arrow back and moved to replace the lid, only to notice something on the inside.

Clint turned the lid over to see the image of a tree in gold etched into the box. That only held his attention for a moment before his eyes were drawn to the corner. Another engraving gave the piece of art a title and a creator.

_Self Portrait_

Scribbles were the only signature, but Clint had seen it before. He barely made out a few letters, but he didn’t need them to know the identity of the woman who made the box. Evidently, he needed to talk to Darcy about a number of things.


	7. Steve

Steve learned the truth because Darcy was stubborn and Frigga was determined. There were a number of other factors, too, but it boiled down to the two women. And the fact that some subset of Murphy’s Law or whatever said that no matter what, you would walk in on a conversation at the worst time imaginable.

And so Steve walked into the common room to see a blonde woman in a long, blue dress braiding Darcy’s hair and weaving small flowers into it. Darcy was dressed in a dark green dress with golden embroidery under the breasts. “You mustn’t fret, darling,” the woman declared, her voice soft instead of scolding. “Odin may no longer hurt you.” She sighed as she finished tying off the braid. “I just wish I had known what he had been doing earlier.”

Darcy turned to look at the woman, a sad little smile on her face. “I know, Frigga,” she replied. “It is just… still worrisome, I suppose.” She looked down at her hands and shook her head. “I know it is silly, but—”

“Nonsense,” Frigga objected. “It is completely reasonable for you to still be afraid, but hopefully you will make no more nightmarish memories of Asgard.” She tucked a stray piece of hair behind Darcy’s ear. “The Council preparing to sentence Odin, and then you will never have to lay eyes upon him again.”

“Thank you, your majesty,” Darcy declared with a small curtsy. “And… I’m sorry.”

“There is nothing to apologize for, dear,” Frigga insisted. “It was Odin’s choice to do what he did, not yours. He deserves whatever he gets.” Darcy let out a sigh of relief, and Frigga smiled. “And you are married to Loki, are you not?” Frigga asked playfully. “Call me mother.”

Darcy grinned in response, not knowing what to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woo! This little part is done! I'm thinking I'll make a standalone piece detailing what happened between the previous chapter and this one (Odin being confronted, the trial, etc).


End file.
